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Lord Cowper, Lord Orrery, the Duke of Wharton, and Jacobitism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Eveline Cruickshanks
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Extract

For the past twelve years one Whig historian after another has attempted to turn back the tide of Jacobite studies, meeting with as much success as King Canute. The purpose of this article is to challenge Clyve Jones's conclusions in this journal (“Jacobitism and the Historian: The Case of William, 1st Earl Cowper,” supra, 23, 4 (Winter 1992): 681-96) that Lord Cowper never became a Jacobite, that Lord Orrery was not a key player in the Atterbury Plot, and that the Duke of Wharton was not a committed Jacobite until the end of the plot. Jones uses a discussion of the evidence of Lord Cowper's involvement with Jacobitism as a means of dismissing the whole subject, using the same arguments as previous Whig critics. “James III” and his advisers were wildly optimistic about the prospects of a Stuart restoration and, therefore, their testimony may largely be disregarded. James, on the contrary, was pessimistic by temperament and may be criticized for over caution rather than rashness. The Stuart papers, Jones argues, are not complete. What historical collection is? Despite the gigantic size of the collection, some papers that were brought to England from Rome have disappeared, notably the letter written from the Tower by Lord Oxford in 1716, expressing the utmost indignation at the harsh treatment meted out to him by George I and the Whig ministers and offering his services to James in the management of Jacobite affairs in England. This letter was found by Sir James Mackintosh when the collection was first deposited at Carlton House, but it has disappeared since. An additional difficulty is that after the discovery of the Atterbury Plot by Walpole and Townshend in 1722, Atterbury, Lord Stafford, and Lord Orrery, leading conspirators, destroyed most of their papers before being arrested. Similarly, Lady Cowper destroyed a large part of her diary and a substantial part of her husband's papers at the time of the Atterbury Plot. The papers destroyed were probably more significant than what remains and this helps to explain why Walpole could find so little evidence about the plot that would stick in a court of law. A good deal of material, nevertheless, has survived, and is it too much to ask that it should be used in the same way as any other historical evidence?

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 27 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1994

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Footnotes

*

I am greatly indebted to Dr. Howard Erskine-Hill, Lawrence Smith, Dr. Paul Hopkins and Dr. Valerie Rumbold for comments and suggestions on the contents of this article. The views expressed are my own.

References

1 Mahon, Lord, History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 7 vols. (1858), 1: 279Google Scholar.

2 Windsor Castle, Royal Archives, Stuart papers 59/18 (hereafter cited as RA), Lord Strafford to James, 18 May 1722, RA, 68/27, Lord Orrery to James, 31 July 1723 (ex. inf. L. Smith) and Archives Etrangeres at the Quai d'Orsay, Correspondance politique, Angleterre (hereafter cited as AECP, Ang.), 341, f. 241.

3 Howard Erskine-Hill and I are working on a book to be published by Macmillan's on Toryism/Jacobitism from 1716 to 1725, in the course of which we will examine Atterbury's creed in the context of politics and culture as well as religion.

4 See Cruickshanks, , “Lord North, Christopher and the Atterbury Plot, 1720–23,” in The Jacobite Challenge, ed. Cruickshanks, Eveline and Black, Jeremy (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 92–106Google Scholar. Layer had been acting as legal adviser to Lord North for some years (PRO, SP35/30/38 and 35/41/40).

5 See his review of Ideology and Conspiracy, ed. Cruickshanks, , in English Historical Review 99 (1964): 186–89Google Scholar.

6 See Monod, Paul, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Szechi, Daniel, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14 (Edinburgh, 1984); and Murray Pittock, The Invention of Scotland, the Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity 1638 to the Present (1991)Google Scholar. The conclusions of Professor Breandan 6 Buachalla on the ideology of Irish Jacobitism are awaited eagerly.

7 Dr. Edward Corp will study the ethos of Jacobitism as part of the Stuart court in exile, a project funded by the EEC on European Courts from the 16th to the 18th centuries, directed in Britain by me in association with Professor Bernard Cottret of the Universite de Versailles. Professor Edward Gregg, a good diplomatic historian, seems to have particular difficulties in understanding the Jacobite creed (see his review of Monod, , Jacobitism and the English People, in British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies 16, 1 (1993): 71Google Scholar.

8 See Cruickshanks, , Political Untouchables: The Tories and the '45 (London, 1979), pp. 12–13Google Scholar, and Lord Cornbury, Bolingbroke and a Plan to Restore the Stuarts, Royal Stuart Papers, 27 (1986)Google Scholar.

9 This is the basic assumption in Colley's, LindaIn Defiance of Oligarchy: the Tory Party 1714–60 (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Michael, W., England under George I: The Beginning of the Hanoverian Dynasty (1936), pp. 372–80Google Scholar.

11 Hertfordshire Record Office, D/EP F 205, pp. 9–10, Lady Mary Cowper's diary.

12 RA, 58/38, James Hamilton to James, 1 Feb. 1722. This account is confirmed by the French envoy, AECP Ang., 337, ff. 121–22, 134–35.

13 Harrowby MSS, Ryder diary, doc. 21, Political and Parliamentary papers, Notes of Sir Dudley Ryder 1740–45.

14 RA, 59/18, Lord Stafford to James, 18 May 1722.

15 AECP Ang., 338, ff. 232–33. Destouches was presumably using “caballe” in the sense of La Grande Encyclopdie, a concerted attempt to sink a play or an opera, and not in the sense of the Cabal of Charles II's reign. For references to Cowper's cabal, see Realey, C. B., The Early Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole (Philadelphia, 1931), p. 82Google Scholar; Colley, , In Defiance of Oligarchy, pp. 63–64Google Scholar; and Bennett, G. V., The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), pp. 231–32Google Scholar.

16 The first list is in PRO, SP35/40/423. For the membership of Lord Orrery's club see Cruickshanks, The Jacobite Challenge, p. 96.

17 Cruickshanks, , The Jacobite Challenge, pp. 92–106Google Scholar.

18 RA, 65/16 “State of England received at Albano, August 1721.” For the significance of the list see RA, 55/143, James Hamilton to James, 2 May 1722. David Hayton's notion that Col. John Hay was the author of the 1721 list because he was drawing up a list of names (not given) two years later is mistaken. Several of the people on the 1721 list were dead by 1723. Moreover, earlier plans centering on England had been superseded by a scheme for a landing in Scotland. The Czar, Peter the Great, hated George I and had surrounded himself with Jacobites and armed assistance was sought from him. Leading supporters in Scotland who were sent orders in the event of a descent included the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Lovat, the Earls of Eglinton, Glasgow, Wigtown, Glencairn, Sir James Campbell, and others (Haile, Martin, James Francis Edward, the Old Chevalier (1917), pp. 296–97Google Scholar). David Hayton has done good work on Irish history and on 1690–1715 parliamentary history, while Stephen Taylor has done fine work on the Whig establishment part of the Church of England. Their qualifications, at this time, for preparing a critical guide to Jacobite historiography, however, are not obvious.

19 Cruickshanks, , The Jacobite Challenge, pp. 96, 106Google Scholar. Layer testified that he was told the membership of the club by John Plunkett, one of the minor conspirators who was connected with Orrery.

20 Herts. RO, D/EP F 59.

21 SRO, GD45/14/846, Earl of Aberdeen to Lord Cowper, 4 March 1722. I owe this reference to Lawrence Smith.

22 RA, 100/45, memo by James Hamilton.

23 Herts. RO, D/EP/86, Declaration of John Semple. Semple had been sending copies of official despatches to “King George's enemies” (AECP Ang., 341, f. 226).

24 Harrowby MSS, Doc. 21. Details of the Duchess of Buckingham's mission are in the Stuart papers.

25 Glover, G. H., The Stuart Papers (1847), p. 63Google Scholar. For the intercepted letter see Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, pp. 239–40.

26 Herts. RO, D/EP F 193, F 182 and F 186; B.L., Add. MSS 62558, f. 13. For his attitude after the Fifteen rebellion, see Campbell, Lord, Lives of the Lords Chancellors, 8 vols. (1845–1869), 4: 255–367Google Scholar.

27 Erskine-Hill, Howard, “Under which Caesar? Pope in the journal of Mrs. Mary Caesar,” Review of English Studies 33 (1982): 436–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rumbold, Valerie, “The Jacobite Vision of Mary Caesar,” Women, Writing, History 1640–1740, ed. Grundy, Isobel and Wiseman, Susan (London, 1992), pp. 178–231Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr. Erskine-Hill and Dr. Rumbold for giving me copies of these essays. See also Rumbold, Valerie, Women's Place in Pope's World (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 237–50Google Scholar.

28 The House of Commons, 1715–54, ed. Sedgwick, Romney, 2 vols. (1970), 1: 514Google Scholar.

29 Monod, , Jacobitism and the English People, p. 290Google Scholar, and Boyer, Abel, The Political State of Great Britain, 60 vols. (1711–1790), 24: 187Google Scholar; 25: 184–86, and 344.

30 B.L., Add. MSS 62538, pp. 12–15.

31 Ibid.; d'Iberville, the French envoy, who had regular contacts with Bromley as secretary of state, wrote that he was a strong Jacobite, (Recueil des Instructions, Angleterre 1698–1791, ed. Vaucher, Paul [Paris, 1965], p. 146)Google Scholar. Bromley gave money for the Swedish plot (Sedgwick, , The House of Commons, 1: 493–94Google Scholar) and corresponded with the Stuart court (RA, 76/92). The idea that he was a Hanoverian Tory seems to rest on his being offered a tellership of the Exchequer, which he refused, on the Hanoverian succession.

32 B.L., Add. MSS 62558, pp. 12–15.

33 Lawrence Smith is completing a full-scale and much-needed study of Orrery's career.

34 HMC Stuart, 5: 122, 305, 446; RA, 46/93, Lord Orrery to James, 1 May 1720, same to same, 18 June 1720 (RA, 47/106), and 29 July (RA, 48/69); RA, 48/55, General Dillon to James, 2 July 1720. I owe details of Law's life at St. Germain to the kindness of Nathalie Genet Rouffiac.

35 RA, 51/52, Orrery to James, 16 January 1722 and RA, 60/54, James to Charles Caesar, 19 June 1722.

36 Lecture by Lawrence Smith, given at the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House in February 1993, to be published by Hambledon Press in a volume edited by Dr. T. C. Barnard.

37 RA, 58/67, Orrery to James, 28 Oct. 1721, and RA, 63/33, James Hamilton to James, 20 November 1722.

38 RA, 63/33, James Hamilton to James, 20 November 1722.

39 Boyer, , Political State, 34: 313–14Google Scholar.

40 For Orrery's friendship with Argyll see James to Orrery, 7 July 1720 (RA, 48/23), and for Argyll and Carleton protecting Orrery see James Hamilton to James, 20 November 1722 (RA, 63/33).

41 B.L., Add. MSS 61830, f. 59. I am grateful to Lawrence Smith for this reference.

42 Harrowby MSS, Doc. 20, Ryder diary.

43 Memoirs of the Life of the Late Duke of Wharton (1731), p. 6Google Scholar.

44 J. Clavering to Lady Cowper, 7 June 1716, quoted in Melville, Lewis, Philp, Duke of Wharton (London, 1913), p. 28Google Scholar.

45 HMC Stuart, 2: 470–72Google Scholar; 3: 37–38.

46 Blackett-Ord, M., Hell-Fire Duke (Windsor Forest, 1982), p. 56Google Scholar.

47 Orrery looked after Wharton's wife after she had a miscarriage, and took charge of his financial affairs after he went abroad in 1725. (I am grateful to Lawrence Smith for this information.)

48 HMC Portland, 7: 279Google Scholar; 5: 601–02; All Souls benefited to the tune of £600, eventually.

49 Cobbett, William, Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols. (1806–1920), 7: 692, 697Google Scholar.

50 Jones expresses surprise at Wharton's inclusion in Orrery's club in Lord Townshend's list. Since I was instrumental in gaining admission to Raynham Hall for him (by kind permission of the Marquess of Townshend) and took him there with me, I would have shown him the evidence on the spot, had he then been working on Hanoverian England.

51 HMC Portland, 7: 309–10Google Scholar.

52 RA, 57/5, James to Sir Henry Goring, 4 January 1722.

53 Melville, pp. 110, 114. In Spain Wharton founded a Jacobite masonic lodge. For the connection between Jacobitism and freemasonry, see the lecture by Jane Clark given at Burlington House in February 1993 to be published by Dr. Barnard.

54 Walpole, Horace, Royal and Noble Authors, ed. Parks, Thomas, 5 vols. (1806), 4: 123Google Scholar.

55 Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwarth, ed. Szechi, Daniel (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 212Google Scholar. Sir John Bland, MP Lancashire 1713–27, was a Jacobite (Sedgwick, , The House of Commons, 1: 468Google Scholar).

56 B.L., Add. MSS 46856, f. 10. I am grateful to Lawrence Smith for this reference.